


Why Did I Have to Know?

by LandofWordsandNonsense (RiaHawk)



Series: Details [3]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Beau doesn't know how to handle this, Ep 18 Spoilers, Gen, Introspection, More than Beau wanted to know, Why did I have to know, caleb's backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-07-03 04:29:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15811389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiaHawk/pseuds/LandofWordsandNonsense
Summary: "You're in the most expensive inn in a hundred miles on the softest bed you've ever felt, and you're lying awake in the dark."She never should have asked.This was absolutely not a responsibility she wanted, but she'd done it to herself.





	Why Did I Have to Know?

Fuck.

 

Beau laid in bed, listening to Jester's soft snoring nearby. She wished she could sleep, it would beat the hell out of staring at the fancy ceiling.  _ For fuck's sake, woman. You're in the most expensive inn in a hundred miles on the softest bed you've ever felt, and you're lying awake in the dark. _

 

She shouldn't have fucking asked.

 

She wasn't even sure why she had, besides prying curiosity. Something in her that had to know. Sure, she could tell herself that she was just getting as much intel as she could, so she could be better prepared, or at least expecting it if things went sideways and Caleb checked out on them again. And to be fair, that was true. To an extent. But mostly, she just wanted to  _ know _ .

 

Thus proving that Beau was a fucking idiot.

 

_ "Why are you afraid of fire?" _

 

It had seemed like it wasn't too big of an ask. A little pushy, a little too nosy, maybe, but ultimately harmless. And maybe for anyone else, it would have been. She had been expecting something along the lines of 'I was trapped in a burning building once' or even 'I set a building on fire'.

 

She should have fucking  _ known _ better when he'd said that he didn't feel comfortable telling her without telling Nott. If it had been something that simple, that  _ innocent _ , Nott would have already known. And she  _ absolutely _ should have known fucking better when Caleb had asked if Nott would be willing to leave with him, just the two of them, right away.

 

_"Is the secret that valuable?"_ Stupid of her. You don't say those sorts of things about valuable secrets. You say them about  _ dangerous _ ones.

 

But, as mentioned, Beau was a fucking idiot. And she'd settled in, like they were school kids telling each other secrets that seemed world-shattering when you were fifteen but weren’t anything really.

 

Then Caleb had said "I am going to tell you the story of how I murdered my mother and father."  _ That’s _ when she had realized what a fucking huge mistake this was, but it was already too late. It was a story he didn't want to tell and she didn't want to hear, but once it had been started, neither could leave it unfinished.

 

Gods, why had he told  _ HER? _ She wasn't  _ good _ at... people-ing. He didn't have to go into the details, he could have just said 'My parents died in a fire', she didn't give a fuck-

 

That was it, she realized, lying awake hours later in the dark. She  _ didn't _ give a fuck. Out of all of them, Caleb could be reasonably sure that she would have the least moral outrage to anything he could confess. And that was basically true. She had been shocked at his confession, sure... but not actually horrified by it.

 

(The horrified part had come later.)

 

She chewed on her thumbnail as she puzzled it out. He hadn't been ready, but this was  _ Caleb _ , he'd never be ready. It hadn't been the right place, the right time, the right  _ person _ ... but this was Caleb. He wouldn't know the right place or the right time if it was wearing Molly's hideous coat and doing a pole dance on Jester's floating lollipop.

 

... Gods that was a weird image.

 

There probably would have been a better time or place to let that out, with a person who could have been more properly sympathetic... but that didn't _matter_ , she suddenly realized. It didn't matter because Caleb had been crushed by this weight for too long, it had been slowly killing him an inch at a time for... gods. How long? How many years had he carried this secret with him? At least five. More than that, it had to be, even if he didn't really remember much about the asylum. She doubted he consciously realized that that was a secret he had to share before it destroyed him. He wasn't the sort. He kept things to himself as long as he could, sometimes longer. But he must have subconsciously known.  _ That _ was why he hadn't fobbed her off with an innocent, uncomplicated half-truth. Anyone else that asked, he probably would have. But Beau's bargain, that he tell her why he was afraid of fire and she'd get him into the library to give him the push, coupled with the fact that she really didn't give a fuck about what crimes he'd committed... it wasn't anywhere close to ideal. But it had been enough.

 

That was absolutely not a responsibility she wanted, but fuck, she'd gotten herself into this.

 

The murder of Caleb's parents wasn’t the hardest part about this, although that was very clearly the worst part of the story to Caleb. To Beau, the worst part of that whole fucking nightmare was that Caleb had been bent and twisted into the fucking murder weapon. She wasn’t even sure if he could see that. Nott tried to explain it, but only ran into the brick wall of Caleb's self-hatred. And on one level, Beau could see where he was coming from. He'd calmly, and with premeditation, done something horrible. To people he loved, who loved him. 

 

But what Beau saw, that she seriously doubted he could, was that this happened after gods only knew how long of that fucker Trent taking Caleb's mind apart and putting it back together willy nilly. Sure, that didn't mean it had been a different man who'd set that fire... but it was clearly something he never would have done if he'd been himself. The fact that he broke after proved it. If he'd really been the monster he called himself, Caleb would have walked away from that none the worse for wear.

 

But it was going to take someone the hell of a lot more empathetic than her to get through to him on that count. Shit, that was going to be a life's work, right there.

 

Nott was the better person for that part of it, she thought. Nott knew Caleb, and he might actually listen to her.

 

Just where the fuck did that leave Beau? She wasn't good with emotions. Give her a problem to punch, and she could do that. She'd punch the shit out of it.

 

Gods, she wanted to punch Trent Ikithon's face clear through the back of his skull. He'd creeped her out by his too-obvious interest in Yasha. Then she'd found out what kind of man he actually _was_. Fuck, what he'd done to Caleb made her sick to her stomach. And that was with Caleb glossing over how he and his fellow apprentices had been treated during their "training".  _ "A little bit of torture and a little bit of murdering-" _ He'd tried to sound like it wasn't a big deal, and maybe to him, it was overshadowed by what had come later. But she could guess... and the story she'd heard tonight suggested that the reality would have been much worse than anything she could imagine. Somehow, it was always worse than you thought with Caleb.

 

She was fucking pissed, she realized suddenly. Pissed as fuck at that fucking monster Trent Ikithon, and pissed at the Academy that had allowed him to flourish. How many other people had he ruined? Or flat out destroyed?

 

_ "Seek out corruption. Expose it. Let the system do its job."  _ Dairon's voice came to her unbidden, and she snorted. Sure. Right. She'd said it herself, earlier, that only Caleb knew what kind of atrocities Trent had committed, that he had a responsibility to try to put a stop to it. Yeah. That was fucking stupid, wasn't it? There was no fucking universe where trying to expose what Trent had been up to didn't come back on Caleb. At best, he'd end up back in an asylum. At worst... well. That was going to happen over her dead body. And frankly probably Nott's too.

 

But even if she was willing to allow that the Academy hadn't known what Trent was doing with his handpicked apprentices- and that was a  _ damn big _ if- who the fuck were they going to believe? The wealthy, respected, brilliant archmage? Or the mentally ill, self-confessed murderer? Shit, the whole system was operating as designed, and it was designed so that people like Caleb would take the fall while people like Trent Ikithon prospered.

 

_ "Then break the system." _

 

She snorted again. Break the system. Like it was easy.

 

She wouldn't admit, even to herself, that the idea had merit.


End file.
